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ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
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THE PROGRAMME OF 
CHRISTIANITY 



UNIFORM, 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD. 

PAX VOBISCUM. 

THE CHANGED LIFE. 



THE PROGRAMME OF 
CHRISTIANITY 



AN ADDRESS 



BY 

HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. 



|[c(n fork 
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 

14 AND 16 AsTOR Place 
1892 



^/ 



.In 



Copyright, 1891, 
By henry DRUMMOND. 

Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemens 

Aug. 24, 1938 

(Not available for exchange) 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 



^ 



V 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction, 9 

The Founding of the Society, , . .18 
The Programme of the Society, . . 24 
The Machinery of the Society, . . 52 



THE 
PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY 

To Preach Good Tidings unto the Meek : 

To Bind up the Broken-Hearted : 

To Proclaim Liberty to the Captives and the Opening of the 

Prison to them that are Bound : 
To Proclaim the Acceptable Year of the Lord, and the Day 

of Vengeance of our God : 
To Comfort all that Mourn : 
To Appoint unto them that Mourn in Zion . 
To Give unto them — 

Beauty for Ashes, 
The Oil of Joy for Mourning, 

The Garment of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness. 
7 



THE PROGRAMME OF 
CHRISTIANITY 

*^ What does God do all day ? " once asked a 
little boy. One could wish that more grown- 
up people would ask so very real a question. 
Unfortunately, most of us are not even boys 
in religious intelligence, but only very un- 
thinking children. It no more occurs to us 
that God is engaged in any particular work in 
the world than it occurs to a little child that 
its father does anything except be its father. 
Its father may be a Cabinet Minister absorbed 
in the nation's work, or an inventor deep in 
schemes for the world's good ; but to this 



lO THE PROGRAMME 



master-egoist he is father, and nothing more. 
Childhood, whether in the physical or moral 
world, is the great self-centred period of life ; 
and a personal God who satisfies personal ends 
is all that for a long time many a Christian 
understands. 

But as clearly as there comes to the grow- 
ing child a knowledge of its father's part in the 
world, and a sense of what real life means, 
there must come to every Christian whose 
o-rowth is true some richer sense of the mean- 
ing of Christianity and a larger view of 
Christ's purpose for mankind. To miss this 
is to miss the whole splendour and glory of 
Christ's religion. Next to losing the sense of 
a personal Christ, the worst evil that can be- 
fall a Christian is to have no sense of anything 
else. To grow up in complacent belief that 
God has no business in this great groaning 



OF CHRISTIANITY. II 



world of human beings except to attend to a 
few saved souls is the negation of all religion. 
The first great epoch in a Christian's life, after 
the awe and wonder of its dawn, is when there 
breaks into his mind some sense that Christ 
has a purpose for mankind, a purpose beyond 
him and his needs, beyond the churches and 
their creeds, beyond Heaven and its saints — - 
a purpose which embraces every man and 
woman born, every kindred and nation 
formed, which regards not their spiritual good 
alone, but their welfare in every part, their 
progress, their health, their work, their wages, 
their happiness in this present world. 

What, then, does Christ do all day ? By 
what further conception shall we augment the 
selfish view of why Christ lived and died ? 

I shall mislead no one, I hope, if I say — for 
I wish to put the social side of Christianity in 



12 THE PROGRAMME 

its strongest light — that Christ did not come 
into the world to give men religion. He 
never mentioned the word religion. Religion 
was in the world before Christ came, and it 
lives to-day in a million souls who have never 
heard His name. What God does all day is 
not to sit waiting in churches for people to 
come and worship Him. It is true that God 
is in churches and in all kinds of churches, 
and is found by many in churches more im- 
mediately than anywhere else. It is also true 
that, while Christ did not give men religion, 
He gave a new direction to the religious aspi- 
ration bursting forth then and now and always 
from the whole world's heart. But it was His 
purpose to enlist these aspirations on behalf 
of some definite practical good. The religious 
people of those days did nothing with their re- 
ligion except attend to its observances. Even 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 3 

the priest, after he had been to the temple, 
thought his work was done ; when he met the 
wounded man he passed by on the other side. 
Christ reversed all this — tried to reverse it, for 
He is only now beginning to succeed. The 
tendency of the religions of all time has been 
to care more for religion than for humanity ; 
Christ cared more for humanity than for re- 
ligion — rather. His care for humanity was the 
chief expression of His religion. He was not 
indifferent to observances, but the practices of 
the people bulked in His thoughts before the 
practices of the Church. It has been pointed 
out as a blemish on the immortal allegory of 
Bunyan that the Pilgrim never did anything — 
anything but save his soul. The remark is 
scarcely fair, for the allegory is designedly the 
story of a soul in a single relation ; and, be- 
sides, he did do a little. But the warning may 



14 THE PROGRAMME 

well be weighed. The Pilgrim's one thought, 
his work by day, his dream by night, was 
escape. He took little part in the world 
through which he passed. He was a Pilgrim 
travelling through it ; his business was to get 
through safe. Whatever this is, it is not 
Christianity. Christ's conception of Chris- 
tianity was heavens removed from that of a 
man setting out from the City of Destruction 
to save his soul. It was rather that of a man 
dwelling amidst the Destructions of the City 
and planning escapes for the souls of others — 
escapes not to the other world, but to purity 
and peace and righteousness in this. In real- 
ity Christ never said ^^ Save your soul." It is 
a mistranslation which says that. What He 
said was, '^ Save your life." And this not be- 
cause the first is nothing, but only because it 
is so very great a thing that only the second 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 1 5 



can accomplish it. But the new word altruism 
— the translation of ^^ love thy neighbour as 
thyself " — is slowly finding its way into cur- 
rent Christian speech. The People's Progress, 
not less than the Pilgrim's Progress, is daily 
becoming a graver concern to the Church. A 
popular theology with unselfishness as part at 
least of its root, a theology which appeals no 
longer to fear, but to the generous heart in 
man, has already dawned, and more clearly 
than ever men are beginning to see what 
Christ really came into this world to do. 

What Christ came here for was to make a 
better world. The world in which we live is 
an unfinished world. It is not wise, it is not 
happy, it is not pure, it is not good — it is not 
even sanitary. Humanity is little more than 
raw material. Almost everything has yet to 
be done to it. Before the days of Geology 



l6 THE PROGRAMME 

people thought the earth was finished. It is 
by no means finished. The work of Creation 
is going on. Before the spectroscope, men 
thought the universe was finished. We know 
now it is just beginning. And this teeming 
universe of men in which we live has almost 
all its finer colour and beauty yet to take. 
Christ came to complete it. The fires of its 
passions were not yet cool ; their heat had 
to be transformed into finer energies. The 
ideals for its future were all to shape, the 
forces to realize them were not yet born. The 
poison of its sins had met no antidote, the 
gloom of its doubt no light, the weight of its 
sorrow no rest. These the Saviour of the 
world, the Light of men, would do and be. 
This, roughly, was His scheme. 

Now this was a prodigious task — to re- 
create the world. How was it to be done? 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 

God's way of making worlds is to make them 
make themselves. When He made the earth 
He made a rough ball of matter and supplied 
it with a multitude of tools to mould it into 
form — the rain-drop to carve it, the glacier to 
smooth it, the river to nourish it, the flower 
to adorn it. God v/orks always with agents, 
and this is our way when we want any great 
thing done, and this was Christ's way when He 
undertook the finishing of Humanity. He 
had a vast, intractable mass of matter to deal 
with, and He required a multitude of tools. 
Christ's tools were men. Hence His first 
business in the world was to make a collection 
of men. In other words. He founded a 
Society. 




THE FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY 

It is a somewhat startling thought — it will 
not be misunderstood — that Christ probably 
did not save many people while He was here. 
Man)' an evangelist, in that direction, has 
done much more. He never intended to fin- 
ish the world single-handed, but announced 
from the first that others would not only take 
part, but do "greater things " than He. For, 
amazing as was the attention He was able to 
give to individuals, this was not the whole 
aim He had in view. His immediate work 
was to enlist men in His enterprise, to rally 
them into a great company or Society for the 

carrying out of His plans. 
i8 



THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY. I9 

The name by which this Society was 
known was The Kingdom of God, Christ did 
not coin this name; it was an old expression, 
and good men had always hoped and prayed 
that some such Society would be born in their 
midst. But it was never either defined or set 
agoing in earnest until Christ made its realiza- 
tion the passion of His life. 

How keenly He felt regarding His task, 
how enthusiastically He set about it, every 
page of His life bears witness. All reformers 
have one or two great words which they use 
incessantly, and by mere reiteration imbed 
indelibly in the thought and history of their 
time. Christ's great word was the Kingdom 
of God. Of all the words of His that have 
come down to us this is by far the common- 
est. One hundred times it occurs in the Gos- 
pels. When He preached He had almost al- 



20 THE PROGRAMME 

ways this for a text. His sermons were expla- 
nations of the aims of His Society, of the 
different things it was Hke, of whom its mem- 
bership consisted, what they were to do or to 
be, or not do or not be. And, even when He 
does not actually use the word, it is easy to 
see that all He said and did had reference to 
this. Philosophers talk about thinking in cat- 
egories — the mind living, as it were, in a par- 
ticular room with its own special furniture, 
pictures, and view-points, these giving a con- 
sistent direction and colour to all that is there 
thought or expressed. It was in the category 
of the Kingdom that Christ's thought moved. 
Though one time He said He came to save 
the lost, or at another time to give men life, 
or to do His Father's will, these were all in- 
cluded among the objects of His Society. 

No one can ever know what Christianity is 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 21 

till he has grasped this leading thought in the 
mind of Christ. Peter and Paul have many 
wonderful and necessary things to tell us 
about what Christ was and did ; but we are 
looking now at what Christ's own thought 
was. Do not think this is a mere modern 
theory. These are His own life-plans taken 
from His own lips. Do not allow any isolated 
text, even though it seem to sum up for you 
the Christian life, to keep you from trying to 
understand Christ's Programme as a whole. 
The perspective of Christ's teaching is not 
everything, but without it everything will be 
distorted and untrue. There is much good in 
a verse, but often much evil. To see some 
small soul pirouetting throughout life on a 
single text, and judging all the world because 
it cannot find a partner, is not a Christian 
sight. Christianity does not grudge such 



22 THE PROGRAMME 

souls their comfort. What it grudges is that 
they make Christ's Kingdom uninhabitable to 
thoughtful minds. Be sure that whenever thei 
religion of Christ appears small, or forbidding, 
or narrow, or inhuman, you are dealing not 
with the whole — which is a matchless moral 
symmetry — nor even with an arch or column ; 
— for every detail is perfect — but with some 
cold stone removed from its place and sug- 
gesting nothing of the glorious structure from 
which it came. 

Tens of thousands of persons who are fa- 
miliar with religious truths have not noticed 
yet that Christ ever founded a Society at all. 
The reason is partly that people have read 
texts instead of reading their Bible, partly 
that they have studied Theology instead of 
studying Christianity, and partly because of 
the noiselessness and invisibility of the King- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 23 

dom of God itself. Nothing truer was ever 
said of this Kingdom than that ^^ It cometh 
without observation." Its first discovery, 
therefore, comes to the Christian with all the 
force of a revelation. The sense of belonging 
to such a Society transforms life. It is the 
difference between being a solitary knight tilt- 
ing single-handed, and often defeated, at what- 
ever enemy one chances to meet on one's lit- 
tle acre of life, and the feel of belonging to 
a mighty army marching throughout all time 
to a certain victory. This note of universality 
given to even the humblest work we do, this 
sense of comradeship, this link with history, 
this thought of a definite campaign, this 
promise of success, is the possession of every 
obscurest unit in the Kingdom of God. 



-^- 




THE PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIETY 

Hundreds of years before Christ's Society 
was formed, its Programme had been issued 
to the world. I cannot think of any scene 
in history more dramatic than when Jesus en- 
tered the church in Nazareth and read it to 
the people. Not that when He appropriated 
to Himself that venerable fragment from 
Isaiah He was uttering a manifesto or an- 
nouncing His formal Programme. Christ 
never did things formally. We think of the 
words, as He probably thought of them, not 

in their old-world historical significance, nor 
24 



THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY. 25 

as a full expression of His future aims, but 
as a summary of great moral facts now and 
always to be realized in the world since He 
appeared. 

Remember as you read the words to what 
grim reality they refer. Recall what Christ^s 
problem really was, what His Society was 
founded for. This Programme deals with a 
real world. Think of it as you read — not of 
the surface-world, but of the world as it 
is, as it sins and weeps, and curses and 
suffers, and sends up its long cry to God. 
Limit it if you like to the world around 
your door, but think of it — of the city and 
the hospital and the dungeon and the grave- 
yard, of the sweating-shop and the pawn- 
shop and the drink-shop ; think of the cold, 
the cruelty, the fever, the famine, the ugli- 
ness, the loneliness, the pain. And then try 



26 THE PROGRAMME 

to keep down the lump in your throat as you 
take up His Programme and read — 

•* To Bind up the Broken-Hearted : 
To Proclaim Liberty to the Captives: 
To Comfort all that Mourn ; 
To Give unto them— 
Beauty for Ashes, 
The Oil of Joy for Mourning, 
The Garment of Praise for the Spirit 
OF Heaviness." 

What an exchange — Beauty for Ashes, 
Joy for Mourning, Liberty for Chains ! No 
marvel '^ the eyes of all them that were in 
the synagogue were fastened on Him '* as 
He read ; or that they ^' wondered at the 
gracious words which proceeded out of His 
lips/' Only one man in that congregation, 
only one man in the world to-day could 
hear these accents with dismay — the man, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 2/ 

the culprit, who has said hard words of 
Christ. 

We are all familiar with the protest, ^^ Of 
course " — as if there were no other alternative 
to a person of culture — ^^ Of course I am not 
a Christian, but I always speak respectfully 
of Christianity." Respectfully of Christian- 
ity ! No remark fills one's soul with such 
sadness. One can understand a man as he 
reads these words being stricken speechless ; 
one can see the soul within him rise to a white 
heat as each fresh benediction falls upon his 
ear and drives him, a half-mad enthusiast, to 
bear them to the world. But in what school 
has he learned of Christ who offers the 
Saviour of the world his respect ? 

Men repudiate Christ's religion because 
they think it a small and limited thing, a 
scheme with no large human interests to com- 



28 THE PROGRAMME 

mend it to this great social age. I ask you to 
note that there is not one burning interest of 
the human race which is not represented here. 
What are the great words of Christianity- 
according to this Programme ? Take as spec- 
imens these : 

LIBERTY, 
COMFORT, 
BEAUTY 
JOY. 

These are among the greatest words of life. 
Give them their due extension, the signifi- 
cance which Christ undoubtedly saw in them 
and which Christianity undoubtedly yields, 
and there is almost no great want or interest 
of mankind which they do not cover. 

These are not only the greatest words of 
life but they are the best. This Programme, 
to those who have misread Christianity, is a 
series of surprises. Observe the most promi- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 29 

nent note in it. It is gladness. Its first word 
IS ''good-tidings," its last is ''joy/' The sad- 
dest words of life are also there — but there as 
the diseases which Christianity comes to cure. 
No life that is occupied with such an enter- 
prise could be other than radiant. The con- 
tribution of Christianity to the joy of living, 
perhaps even more to the joy of thinking, 
is unspeakable. The joyful life is the life 
of the larger mission, the disinterested life, 
the life of the overflow from self, the '' more 
abundant life " which comes from following 
Christ. And the joy of thinking is the larger 
thinking, the thinking of the man who 
holds in his hand some Programme for 
Humanity. The Christian is the only man 
who has any Programme at all — any Pro- 
gramme either for the world or for himself. 
Goethe, Byron, Carlyle taught Humanity 



30 THE PROGRAMME 

much, but they had no Programme for it. 
Byron's thinking was suffering, Carlyle's de- 
spair. Christianity alone exults. The belief 
in the universe as moral, the interpretation 
of history as progress, the faith in good as 
eternal, in evil as self-consuming, in humanity 
as evolving — these Christian ideas have trans- 
formed the malady of thought into a bound- 
ing hope. It was no sentiment but a con- 
viction, matured amid calamity and submitted 
to the tests of life, that inspired the great 
modern poet of optimism to proclaim: 

"Gladness be with thee, Helper of the world ! 
I think this is the authentic sign and seal 
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad 
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts 
Into a rage to suffer for mankind 
And recommence at sorrow." 

But that is not all. Man's greatest needs 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 3 1 

are often very homely. And it is almost as 
much in its fearless recognition of the com- 
monplace woes of life, and its deliberate offer- 
ings to minor needs, that the claims of Chris^ 
tianity to be a religion for Humanity stand. 
Look, for instance, at the closing sentence of 
this Programme. Who would have expected 
to find among the special objects of Christ's 
solicitude the Spirit of Heaviness ? Supreme 
needs, many and varied, had been already 
dealt with on this Programme ; many appli- 
cants had been met ; the list is about to close. 
Suddenly the writer remembers the nameless 
malady of the poor — that mysterious disease 
which the rich share but cannot alleviate, 
which is too subtle for doctors, too incurable 
for Parliaments, too unpicturesque for philan- 
thropy, too common even for sympathy. Can 
Christ meet that ? 



it THE PROGRAMME 

If Christianity could even deal with the 
world's Depression, could cure mere dull 
spirits, it would be the Physician of Hu- 
manity. But it can. It has the secret, a 
hundred secrets, for the lifting of the world's 
gloom. It cannot immediately remove the 
physiological causes of dulness — though obedi- 
ence to its principles can do an infinity to pre- 
vent them, and its inspirations can do even 
more to lift the mind above them. But where 
the causes are moral or mental or social the 
remedy is in every Christian's hand. Think 
of any one at this moment whom the Spirit of 
Heaviness haunts. You think of a certain old 
woman. But you know for a fact that you 
can cure her. You did so, perfectly, only a 
week ago. A mere visit, and a little present, 
or the visit without any present, set her up 
for seven long days and seven long nights. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 33 

The machinery of the Kingdom is very simple 
and very silent, and the most silent parts do 
most, and we all believe so little in the medi- 
cines of Christ that we do not know what 
ripples of healing are set in motion when we 
simply smile on one another. Christianity 
wants nothing so much in the world as sunny 
people, and the old are hungrier for love than 
for bread, and the Oil of Joy is very cheap, 
and if you can help the poor on with a Gar- 
ment of Praise it will be better for them than 
blankets. 

Or perhaps you know some one else who is 
dull — not an old woman this time, but a very 
rich and important man. But you also know 
perfectly what makes him dull. It is either 
his riches or his importance. Christianity can 
cure either of these — though you may not be 

the person to apply the cure — at a single hear- 
3 



34 THE PROGRAMME 

ing. Or here is a third case, one of your own 
servants. It is a case of monotony. Prescribe 
more variety, leisure, recreation — anything to 
relieve the wearing strain. A fourth case — 
your most honoured guest : Condition — leis- 
ure, health, accomplishments, means ; Disease 
— Spiritual Obesity ; Treatment — talent to be 
put out to usury. And so on down the whole 
range of life's dejection and ennui. 

Perhaps you tell me this is not Christianity 
at all ; that everybody could do that. The cu- 
rious thing is that everybody does not. Good- 
will to men came into the world with Christ, 
and wherever that is found, in Christian or 
heathen land, there Christ is, and there His 
Spirit works. And if you say that the chief 
end of Christianity is not the world's happi- 
ness, I agree ; it was never meant to be ; but 
the strange fact is that, without making it its 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 35 

chief end, it wholly and infallibly, and quite 
universally, leads to it. Hence the note of 
Joy, though not the highest on Christ's Pro- 
gramme, is a loud and ringing note, and none 
who serve in His Society can be long without 
its music. Time was when a Christian used to 
apologize for being happy. But the day has 
always been when he ought to apologize for 
being miserable. 

Christianity, you will observe, really works. 
And it succeeds not only because it is divine, 
but because it is so very human — because it is 
common-sense. Why should the Garment of 
Praise destroy the Spirit of Heaviness? Be- 
cause an old woman cannot sing and cry at 
the same moment. The Society of Christ is a 
sane Society. Its methods are rational. Tlie 
principle in the old woman's case is simply 
that one emotion destroys another. Christian- 



36 THE PROGRAMME 

ity works, as a railway man would say, with 
points. It switches souls from valley lines to 
mountain lines, not stemming the currents of 
life but diverting them. In the rich man's 
case the principle of cure is different, but it is 
again principle, not necromancy. His spirit of 
heaviness is caused, like any other heaviness, 
by the earth's attraction. Take away the 
earth and you take away the attraction. But 
if Christianity can do anything it can take 
away the earth. By the wider extension of 
horizon which it gives, by the new standard 
of values, by the mere setting of Hfe's small 
pomps and interests and admirations in the 
light of the Eternal, it dissipates the world 
with a breath. All that tends to abolish 
worldliness tends to abolish unrest, and hence, 
in the rush of modern life, one far-reaching 
good of all even commonplace Christian 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 37 

preaching, all Christian literature, all which 
holds the world doggedly to the idea of a God 
and a future life, and reminds mankind of In- 
finity and Eternity. 

Side by side with these influences, yet tak- 
ing the world at a wholly different angle, 
works another great Christian force. How 
many opponents of religion are aware that 
one of the specific objects of Christ's Society 
is Beauty? The charge of vulgarity against 
Christianity is an old one. If it means that 
Christianity deals with the ruder elements in 
human nature, it is true, and that is its glory. 
But if it means that it has no respect for the 
finer qualities, the charge is baseless. For 
Christianity not only encourages whatsoever 
things are lovely, but wars against that whole 
theory of life which would exclude them. It 
prescribes aestheticism ; it proscribes asceti- 



38 THE PROGRAMME 

cism. And for those who preach to Christians 
that in these enlightened days they must raise 
the masses by giving them noble sculptures 
and beautiful paintings and music and public 
parks, the answer is that these things are all 
already being given, and given daily, and with 
an increasing sense of their importance, by the 
Society of Christ. Take away from the world 
the beautiful things which have not come from 
Christ and you will make it poorer scarcely at 
all. Take away from modern cities the paint- 
ings, the monuments, the music for the peo- 
ple, the museums and the parks which are 
not the gifts of Christian men and Christian 
municipalities, and in ninety cases out of a 
hundred you will leave them unbereft of so 
much as a well-shaped lamp-post. 

It is impossible to doubt that the Decora- 
tor of the World shall not continue to serve 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 39 

to His later children, and in ever finer forms, 
the inspirations of beautiful things. More 
fearlessly than he has ever done, the Christian 
of modern life will use the noble spiritual 
leverages of Art. That this world, the peo- 
ple's world, is a bleak and ugly world, we do 
not forget ; it is ever with us. But we esteem 
too little the mission of Beautiful Things in 
haunting the mind with higher thoughts and 
begetting the mood which leads to God. 
' Physical beauty makes moral beauty. Love- 
liness does more than destroy ugliness; it 
destroys matter. A mere touch of it in a 
room, in a street, even on a door-knocker, is a 
spiritual force. Ask the workingman's wife, 
\ and she will tell you there is a moral effect 
even in a clean table-cloth. If a barrel-organ 
in a slum can but drown a curse, let no Chris- 
tian silence it. The mere light and colour of 



40 THE PROGRAMME 

the wall-advertisements are a gift of God to 
the poor man's sombre world. 

One Christmas-time a poor drunkard told 
me that he had gone out the night before to 
take his usual chance of the temptations of 
the street. Close to his door, at a shop win- 
dow, an angel — so he said — arrested him. It 
was a large Christmas card, a glorious white 
thing with tinsel wings, and as it glittered in 
the gaslight it flashed into his soul a sudden 
thought of Heaven. It recalled the earlier 
heaven of his infancy, and he thought of his 
mother in the distant glen, and how it would 
please her if she got this Christmas angel from 
her prodigal. With money already pledged to 
the devil he bought the angel, and with it a 
new soul and future for himself. That was a 
real angel. For that day, as I saw its tinsel 
pinions shine in his squalid room, I knew what 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 4I 

Christ's angels were. They are all beautiful 
things, which daily in common homes are 
bearing up heavy souls to God. 

But do not misunderstand me. This angel 
was made of pasteboard : a pasteboard angel 
can never save a soul. Tinsel reflects the sun, 
but warms nothing. Our Programme must go 
deeper. Beauty may arrest the drunkard, but 
it cannot cure him. 

It is here that Christianity asserts itself 
with a supreme individuality. It is here that 
it parts company with Civilization, with Pol- 
itics, with all secular schemes of Social Re- 
form. In its diagnosis of human nature it 
finds that which most other systems ignore ; 
which, if they see, they cannot cure ; which, 
left undestroyed, makes every reform futile, 
and every inspiration vain. That thing is Sin, 
Christianity, of all other philanthropies, recog- 



42 THE PROGRAMME 

nizes that man's devouring need is Liberty — 
liberty to stop sinning ; to leave the prison of 
his passions, and shake off the fetters of his 
past. To surround Captives with statues and 
pictures, to offer Them-that-are-Bound a higher 
wage or a cleaner street or a few more cubic 
feet of air per head, is solemn trifling. It is a 
cleaner soul they want ; a purer air, or any air 
at all, for their higher selves. 

And where the cleaner soul is to come 
from apart from Christ I cannot tell. '* By no 
political alchemy," Herbert Spencer tells us, 
" can you get golden conduct out of leaden in- 
stincts.'' The power to set the heart right, to 
renew the springs of action, comes from 
Christ. The sense of the infinite worth of the 
single soul, and the recoverableness of man at 
his worst, are the gifts of Christ. The free- 
dom from guilt, the forgiveness of sins, come 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 



from Christ's Cross; the hope of immortality 
springs from Christ's grave. We believe in 
the gospel of better laws and an improved 
environment ; we hold the religion of Christ 
to be a social religion; we magnify and call 
Christian the work of reformers, statesmen, 
philanthropists, educators, inventors, sanitary 
officers, and all who directly or remotely aid, 
abet, or further the higher progress of man- 
kind ; but in Him alone, in the fulness of that 
word, do we see the Saviour of the world. 

There are earnest and gifted lives to-day at 
work among the poor whose lips at least will 
not name the name of Christ. I speak of 
them with respect ; their shoe-latchets many 
of us are not worthy to unloose. But because 
the creed of the neighbouring mission-hall is 
a travesty of religion they refuse to acknowl- 
edge the power of the living Christ to stop 



44 THE PROGRAMME 

man's sin, of the dying Christ to forgive it. 
Oh, narrowness of breadth ! Because there are 
ignorant doctors do I yet rail at medicine or 
start an hospital of my own ? Because the 
poor raw evangelist, or the narrow ecclesiastic, 
offer their little all to the poor, shall I repu- 
diate all they do not know of Christ because 
of the little that they do know ? Of gospels 
for the poor which have not some theory, 
state it how you will, of personal conversion 
one cannot have much hope. Personal con- 
version means for life a personal religion, a 
personal trust in God, a personal debt to ; 
Christ, a personal dedication to His cause. ,V 
These, brought about how you will, are [ 
supreme things to aim at, supreme losses if 
they are missed. Sanctification will come to 
masses only as it comes to individual men ; 
and to work with Christ's Programme and 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 

ignore Christ is to utilize the sun's light 
without its energy. 

But this is not the only point at which 
the uniqueness of this Society appears. There 
is yet another depth in humanity which no 
other system even attempts to sound. We 
live in a world not only of sin but of 
sorrow — 

" There is no flock, however watched and tended, 
But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no home, howe'er defended, 
But has one vacant chair." 

When the flock thins, and the chair emp- 
ties, who is to be near to heal ? At that 
moment the gospels of the world are on 
trial. In the presence of Death how will 
they act ? Act ! They are blotted out of 
existence. Philosophy, Politics, Reforms are 
no more. The Picture Galleries close. The 



46 THE PROGRAMME 

Sculptures hide. The Committees disperse. 
There is crape on the door ; the world with- 
draws. Observe, it withdraws. It has no 
mission. 

So awful in its loneliness was this hour 
that the Romans paid a professional class to 
step in with its mummeries and try to fill 
it. But that is Christ's own hour. Next 
to Righteousness the greatest word of Chris- 
tianity is Comfort. Christianity has almost a 
monopoly of Comfort. Renan was never 
nearer the mark than when he spoke of the 
Bible as '' the great Book of the Consolation 
of Humanity.'* Christ's Programme is full 
of Comfort, studded with Comfort : '' to Bind 
up the Broken-Hearted, to Comfort all that 
Mourn, to Give unto them that Mourn in 
Zion." Even the '' good tidings to the 
meek " are, in the Hebrew, a message to 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 

the '^afflicted*' or ^^ the poor/' The word 
Gospel itself comes down through the Greek 
from this very passage, so that whatever else 
Christ's Gospel means it is first an Evangel 
for suffering men. 

One note in this Programme jars with all 
the rest. When Christ read from Isaiah that 
day He never finished the passage. A ter- 
rible word, Vengeance, yawned like a preci- 
pice across His path ; and in the middle of 
a sentence '' He closed the Book, and gave 
it again to the minister, and sat down." A 
Day of Vengeance from our God — these were 
the words before which Christ paused. When 
the prophet proclaimed it some great his- 
torical fulfilment was in his mind. Had 
the people to whom Christ read been able to 
understand its ethical equivalents He would 
probably have read on. For, so understood, 



48 THE PROGRAMME 

instead of filling the mind with fear, the 
thought of this dread Day inspires it with a 
solemn gratitude. The work of the Avenger is 
a necessity. It is part of God's philanthropy. 

For I have but touched the surface in 
speaking of the sorrow of the world as if it 
came from people dying. It comes from peo- 
ple living. Before ever the Broken-Hearted 
can be healed a hundred greater causes of suf- 
fering than death must be destroyed. Before 
the Captive can be free a vaster prison than 
his own sins must be demolished. There are 
hells on earth into which no breath of Heaven 
can ever come ; these must be swept away. 
There are social soils in which only unright- 
eousness can flourish ; these must be broken 
up. 

And that is the work of the Day of Ven- 
geance. When is that day ? It is now. Who 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 

is the Avenger ? Law. What Law ? Crimi- 
nal Law, Sanitary Law, Social Law, Natural 
Law. Wherever the poor are trodden upon 
or tread upon one another; wherever the air 
is poison and the water foul ; wherever want 
stares, and vice reigns, and rags rot — there the 
Avenger takes his stand. Whatever makes it 
more difficult for the drunkard to reform, for 
the children to be pure, for the widow to earn 
a wage, for any of the wheels of progress to 
revolve — with these he deals. Delay him not. 
He is the messenger of Christ. Despair of 
him not, distrust him not. His Day dawns 
slowly, but his work is sure. Though evil 
stalks the world, it is on the way to execu- 
tion ; though wrong reigns, it must end in 
self-combustion. The very nature of things 
is God's Avenger ; the very story of civiliza- 
tion is the history of Christ's Throne. 
4 



50 THE PROGRAMME 

Anything that prepares the way for a bet- 
ter social state is the fit work of the followers 
of Christ. Those who work on the more spir- 
itual levels leave too much unhonoured the 
slow toil of multitudes of unchurched souls 
who prepare the material or moral environ- 
ments without which these higher labours are 
in vain. Prevention is Christian as well as 
cure ; and Christianity travels sometimes by 
the most circuitous paths. It is given to 
some to work for immediate results, and from 
year to year they are privileged to reckon up a 
balance of success. But these are not always 
the greatest in the Kingdom of God. The 
men who get no stimulus from any visible re- 
ward, whose lives pass while the objects for 
which they toil are still too far away to com- 
fort them ; the men who hold aloof from daz- 
zling schemes and earn the misunderstanding 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



SI 



of the crowd because they foresee remoter 
issues, who even oppose a seeming good be- 
cause a deeper evil lurks beyond — these are 
the statesmen of the Kingdom of God. 





THE MACHINERY OF THE SOCIETY 

Such in dimmest outline is the Programme 
of Christ's Society. Did you know that all 
this was going on in the world ? Did you 
know that Christianity was such a living and 
purpose-like thing? Look back to the day 
w^hen that Programme was given, and you 
will see that it was not merely written on 
paper. Watch the drama of the moral order 
rise up, scene after scene, in history. Study 
the social evolution of humanity, the spread 
of righteousness, the amelioration of life, the 
freeing of slaves, the elevation of woman, the 
purification of religion, and ask what these 

52 



THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 

can be if not the coming of the Kingdom of 
God on earth. For it is precisely through 
the movements of nations and the Hves of 
men that this Kingdom comes. Christ might 
have done all this work Himself, with His 
own hands. But He did not. The crowning 
wonder of His scheme is that He entrusted it 
to men. It is the supreme glory of humanity 
that the machinery for its redemption should 
have been placed within itself. I think the 
saddest thing in Christ's life was that after 
founding a Society with aims so glorious He 
had to go away and leave it. 

But in reality He did not leave it. The 
old theory that God made the world, made it 
as an inventor would make a machine, and 
then stood looking on to see it work, has 
passed away. God is no longer a remote 
spectator of the natural world, but immanent 



54 THE PROGRAMME 

in it, pervading matter by His present Spirit, 
and ordering it by His Will. So Christ is 
immanent in men. His work is to move the 
hearts and inspire the lives of men, and 
through such hearts to move and reach the 
world. Men, only men, can carry out this 
work. This humanness, this inwardness, of 
the Kingdom is one reason why some scarcely 
see that it exists at all. We measure great 
movements by the loudness of their advertise- 
ment, or the place their externals fill in the 
public eye. This Kingdom has no externals. 
The usual methods of propagating a great 
cause were entirely discarded by Christ. The 
sword He declined ; money He had none ; 
literature He never used ; the Church dis- 
owned Him ; the State crucified Him. Plant- 
ing His ideals in the hearts of a few poor men. 
He started them out unheralded to revolu- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 

tionize the world. They did it by making 
friends — and by making enemies ; they went 
about, did good, sowed seed, died, and lived 
again in the lives of those they helped. 
These in turn, a fraction of them, did the 
same. They met, they prayed, they talked 
of Christ, they loved, they went among other 
men, and by act and word passed on their 
secret. The machinery of the Kingdom of 
God is purely social. It acts, not by com- 
mandment, but by contagion ; not by fiat, but 
by friendship. '^ The Kingdom of God is like 
unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in 
three measures of meal till the whole was 
leavened." 

After all, like all great discoveries once 
they are made, this seems absolutely the most 
feasible method that could have been devised. 
Men mus^ live among men. Men must influ- 



56 THE PROGRAMME 

ence men. Organizations, institutions, churches, 
have too much rigidity for a thing that is to 
flood the world. The only fluid in the world 
is man. War might have won for Christ's 
cause a passmg victory ; wealth might have 
purchased a superficial triumph ; political 
power might have gained a temporary success. 
But in these there is no note of universality, 
of solidarity, of immortality. To live through 
the centuries and pervade the uttermost ends 
of the earth, to stand while kingdoms tottered 
and civilizations changed, to survive fallen 
churches and crumbling creeds — there was no 
soil for the Kingdom of God like the hearts of 
common men. Some who have written about 
this Kingdom have emphasized its moral 
grandeur, others its universality, others its 
adaptation to man's needs. One great writer 
speaks of its prodigious originality, another 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

chiefly notices its success. I confess what al- 
most strikes me most is the miracle of its 
simplicity. 

Men, then, are the only means God's Spirit 
has of accomplishing His purpose. What 
men ? You. Is it worth doing, or is it not ? 
Is it worth while joining Christ's Society, or 
is it not ? What do you do all day ? What 
is your personal stake in the coming of the 
Kingdom of Christ on earth ? You are not 
interested in religion, you tell me ; you do 
not care for your '' soul." It was not about 
your religion I ventured to ask, still less about 
your soul. That you have no religion, that 
you do not care for your soul, does not absolve 
you from caring for the world in which you 
live. But you do not believe in this church, 
you reply, or accept this doctrine or that. 
Christ does not, in the first instance, ask your 



58 THE PROGRAMME 

thoughts, but your work. No man has a 
right to postpone his life for the sake of his 
thoughts. Why? Because this is a real 
world, not a think world. Treat it as a real 
world — act. Think by all means, but think 
also of what is actual, of what like the stern 
world is, of how much even you, creedless and 
churchless, could do to make it better. The 
thing to be anxious about is not to be right 
with man, but with mankind. And, so far as 
I know, there is nothing so on all fours with 
mankind as Christianity. 

There are versions of Christianity, it is 
true, which no self-respecting mind can do 
other than disown — versions so hard, so nar- 
row, so unreal, so super-theological, that prac- 
tical men can find in them neither outlet for 
their lives nor resting-place for their thoughts. 
With these we have nothing to do. With 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 59 

these Christ had nothing to do — except to 
oppose them with every word and act of His 
Hfe. It too seldom occurs to those who re- 
pudiate Christianity because of its narrowness 
or its unpracticalness, its sanctimoniousness or 
its dulness, that these were the very things 
which Christ strove against and unweariedly 
condemned. It was the one risk of His relig- 
ion being given to the common people — 
an inevitable risk which He took without re- 
serve — that its infinite lustre should be tar- 
nished in the fingering of the crowd or have 
its great truths narrowed into mean and un- 
worthy moulds as they passed from lip to lip. 
But though the crowd is the object of Chris- 
tianity, it is not its custodian. Deal with the 
Founder of this great Commonwealth Him- 
self. Any man of honest purpose who will 
take the trouble to inquire at first hand what 



6o THE PROGRAMME ^ 

Christianity really is will find it a thing he 
cannot get away from. Without either argu- 
ment or pressure, by the mere practicalness 
of its aims and the pathos of its compassions, 
it forces its august claim upon every serious 
life. 

He who joins this Society finds himself 
in a large place. The Kingdom of God is a 
Society of the best men, working for the best 
ends, according to the best methods. Its 
membership is a multitude whom no man can 
number; its methods are as various as human 
nature ; its field is the world. It is a Com- 
monwealth, yet it honours a King ; it is a 
Social Brotherhood, but it acknowledges the 
Fatherhood of God. Though not a Philos- 
ophy the world turns to it for light ; though 
not Political it is the incubator of all great 
laws. It is more human than the State, for 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 6l 

it deals with deeper needs ; more Catholic 
than the Church, for it includes whom the 
Church rejects. It is a Propaganda, yet it 
works not by agitation but by ideals. It is 
a Religion, yet it holds the worship of God 
to be mainly the service of man. Though 
not a Scientific Society its watchword is Evo- 
lution ; though not an Ethic it possesses the 
Sermon on the Mount. This mysterious 
Society owns no wealth but distributes fort> 
unes. It has no minutes for history keeps 
them; no member's roll for no one could 
make it. Its entry-money is nothing ; its sub- 
scription, all you have. The Society never 
meets and it never adjourns. Its law is one 
word — loyalty ; its Gospel one message — love. 
Verily '' Whosoever will lose his life for My 
sake shall find it.'' 

The Programme for the other life is not 



62 THE PROGRAMME OF CHRISTIANITY. 

out yet. For this world, for these faculties, 
for his one short Hfe, I know nothing that is 
offered to man to compare with membership 
in the Kingdom of God. Among the myste- 
ries which compass the world beyond, none is 
greater than how there can be in store for 
man a work more wonderful, a life more God- 
like than this. If you know anything better, 
live for it ; if not, in the name of God and of 
Humanity, carry out Christ's plan. 



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